Microsoft's Visual Studio team has put the database division to shame. Days after Microsoft slipped out the news that the update to SQL Server will not be ready in time for next month's big-dog release event, Visual Studio 2008 has been released commercially - ahead of time.

IBM thinks it can slice the hell out of a server. In fact, it looks to use virtualization as a major weapon against Unix rivals Sun Microsystems and HP and against x86 vendors. Don't believe us? Then witness the PowerVM branding exercise.

Yahoo! president Sue Decker believes her company is "moving from catch-up mode to a mode of true differentiation." But its fourth quarter profits were down 23 per cent, and it will soon axe seven per cent of its work force.

Sweets don’t usually inspire many creations other than toothbrushes, mouthwash and toothpaste, but designer Bomi Kim was obviously knocking back the Refreshers when he dreamt up this concept MP3 player.

Google's "I'm feeling lucky" button was designed to save web searchers time by automatically opening the first page of a query. It turns out the feature, and similar ones from other search engines, are increasingly helping junk mailers get around anti-spam products.

ReviewThe HD format wars may be inching forward on the content front, but on the hardware side Toshiba has made a very aggressive move with the HD-EP30 - an HD DVD player which could be yours for less than £200.

The Wii may have brightened up the gaming industry, but until now it’s only been an angular and bland white console. So a German retailer is attempting to inject a little colour into the consoles with a new line of controllers.

A pair of sociologists have produced a piece of research in which they claim that graduate engineers are statistically over-represented among jihadi terrorists. They go on to suggest that engineers have a "terrorist mindset" making them likelier to turn jihadi than other kinds of people.

HD DVD managed to cut itself a rather larger slice of US hi-def player sales in the third week of January, according to one analyst group's figures. But a rival market watcher still believes that HD DVD will be dead before 2009.

Chinese officials have announced that the Beijing Meteorological Bureau has successfully carried out experiments aimed at preventing light rain from washing out the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics on 8 August.

The US military is putting into effect contingency plans to deal with the possibility that a large spy satellite expected to fall to Earth in late February or early March could actually hit North America.

The head of the UK government's secret electronic spying and codebreaking agency, GCHQ, has said that his organisation's ability to intercept conversations and messages is seriously undermined by internet-protocol (IP) communications. The digital spook's comments may come as a blow to British and European politicians who have sworn to eradicate terrorism from the internet.

SWsoft Parallels has today launched the finalized version of its anti-hypervisor approach to virtualization, Virtuozzo Containers 4.0. It also appears the company is officially SWsoft no longer. Banish the name from your mind.

This story was corrected throughout to name Expedia.com as one of two sites found by Trend Micro and Sandi Hardmeier to be serving malicious banner ads. While Excite.com has been found in the past to also host attack ads, there are no recent reports it has done so recently.

The US Navy will astound the world tomorrow by test-firing a radical new weapon system at an unprecedented power level. The new piece of war-tech on trial is that old sci-fi favourite, an electromagnetic railgun.

This afternoon, during a conference call with industry analysts and reporters, Amazon chief financial officer Thomas Szkutak gave the world a peek into the company's plans for the coming year. "In 2008, you know, we're going to do more of what we did in 2007," he said.